Interview:
Cowboy Mouth Brings The Mardi Gras To Ferndale
 

By GARY GRAFF of the Oakland Press

» See more SOUND CHECK

About all New Orleans’ Cowboy Mouth has to do to have a good time is set up its gear somewhere. But singerdrummer Fred LeBlanc says that this

year’s version of the group’s annual

“Mardi Gras” tour has been made all the

better by having Arizona guitar whiz Junior Brown on the road with it.

“It’s almost a privilege just to watch somebody that good at what they do every night,” says LeBlanc. “He’s almost a savant with his instrument. And he and his guys are as nice as can be, so it’s been nothing but a pleasure.

“Junior’s told me several times he’s enjoying the tour. We do our best to make it easy for them, and they return the favor, so it’s great.”

LeBlanc and his bandmates, meanwhile, are starting to hatch plans for Cowboy Mouth’s next album, the follow-up to 2008’s “Fearless,” which was the group’s 11th release. He feels that the “fragmentary” recording process of “Fearless” resulted in “some of our best stuff,” and he’s not even sure he wants to commit Cowboy Mouth to another fulllength album, but maybe put things out in a more piecemeal fashion.

“I’m up for anything that kind of shakes up the old order,” LeBlanc explains. “The whole idea of going into a studio is financially antiquated; it doesn’t make any sense to plunk down $1,000 a day to get good tracks when you can do it at home and take your time and build songs the way they need to be built — and then put ’em out however you want.

“So we’re thinking about releasing songs individually or in small groups or something. We’ve got a lot of ideas; we just have to see what kind of material we have and then go from there.”



Cowboy Mouth and Junior Brown perform Friday (Feb. 5) at the Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale. Doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20. Call 248-544-3030 or visit www.themagicbag.com.